Too Romantic and Too Picky? Nope — Just Demisexual

All my life people who know me (and some who don’t) have accused me of being too choosy

Most women have never pushed my buttons when it comes to attraction and dating. Until this year I never really understood why. I didn’t go on dates as a teenager no matter how often people tried to set me up with their friends, family friends, or with their friends’ daughters etc.

I never dated as a teenager and entered my first relationship in my early twenties, a relationship that lasted twelve years. I finally went on my first online dating date in my late thirties.

All that time from my mid-teens to my early twenties, many seemed so concerned that I should find a wife and get married before I turned twenty because that’s exactly what they did. And so they tried to set me up repeatedly with anyone and everyone who was vaguely good looking and about my age.

But I wasn’t all that interested.

I knew I wasn’t gay or bi, but I didn’t get what I was supposed to find attractive about these women that I didn’t know and only had a picture or two as a frame of reference.

So, I resisted, refused, told them to leave me alone and I’ll do it in my own time in my own way. I made excuses like wanting to focus on school. No doubt some thought I was gay even though I had and still have zero romantic or sexual attraction towards men.

I couldn’t articulate back then that I wasn’t so much indifferent to looks, but that I couldn’t make that connection in my mind that pretty = someone I should want to go out with.

Through my life I have faced accusations of being “too picky” and having standards way above my own attractiveness level. I know some of those who know me personally who haven’t said it have almost certainly thought it.

This carried over into dating after divorce roughly 2011–2013. More than once I got messages from women on dating sites telling me to lower my standards because I’m “nothing special.” One demanded to know why I felt “entitled” to date only highly qualified women.

That was when I realised the sort of women who really pushed my buttons — nerdy, creative, qualified women curious about the world and eager to learn and do new things, and not just a preference. I started describing myself as “sapiosexual” though now I think this was part of my unrealised demisexuality.

I don’t think I’m anything special, nor did I feel entitled to anyone. Just like anyone else though, I am entitled to my standards, and my qualifiers and disqualifiers. If I want to reject a woman for any reason, that’s my right — just like any woman has the right to reject me for any reason, and many have.

I tried dating people with no qualifications, no aspirations, and no curiosity about the world — three or four times in fact. I felt nothing even though the women I met were perfectly nice people.

I have a very clear idea of the sort of person I want in my life now. As my partner recently said “you seem almost completely indifferent to what somebody looks like” pointing out how much importance I place on character. I would add in humour, passions, trust, strong friendship, and shared values.

For me, a pretty face in isolation does nothing, never has, and never will. I’m finally realising just how important secondary forms of attraction are to me.